The 52nd Rep

Sam Parr emailed Tim Westergren 52 times to get him to speak at an event. Most people would view the first 3 silences as rejection, never mind 51.

I don't know Sam. But a pattern I've noticed with dozens of leaders leaves me confident his 52 reps was not an act of gritty persistence.

What if there was no grit involved at all?

There are two types of feedback loops from actions you take. One generates a byproduct that creates massive resistance. The other generates no byproduct, and no resistance at all.

Here's how it works. Many leaders unconsciously run feedback through three checkpoints when they take action. Take the action. Checkpoint 1. Get feedback. Checkpoint 2. Then route the feedback through a third checkpoint: what does this say about me?

That third checkpoint is automatic, instant, unconscious and pernicious. "What does it say about me that this isn't working?" Or, "What will I look like to others if I go at it again and it still doesn't work?"

3-node processing means feedback gets run through your identity. If an action doesn't work, you don't downgrade the action or the opportunity.

You downgrade you. And it means you are encumbered when you consider an action, and process the feedback.

And the encumbrance accumulates. Every non-result routed through identity compounds. By rep 5, you're not just sending another email. You're defending a full-on identity assault. Who am I? What am I doing? How did I get here?

The cognitive load per rep escalates until the whole thing collapses. That's why this type of persistence needs grit to push through waves of identity impacts generated by the third node.

Leaders like Parr run two nodes only. Action. Feedback. Repeat. He's just trying to find the rep that will work. That's all.

Identity implications are lost on him.

An action that doesn't work is encoded as "that didn't work." The feedback is applied only to the action. What others call failure, the 2-node leader experiences as a thing that isn't working yet.

And "not working yet" is just one of the noises their achievement machine makes while running.

The difference between Parr and most leaders is not courage, pain tolerance, or grit.

It's what doesn't happen between reps.

No identity byproducts are generated from "not working yet" signals. Courage and grit are not required to push through resistance that was never generated in the first place.

With two-node leaders, rep 1 costs the same as rep 51. You can sustain volume indefinitely because the reps are just reps. With three nodes, every rep costs more than the last. The identity tax compounds.

So what does the 3-node person actually experience from the inside? It looks like thoughtfulness. It feels like emotional intelligence. You're checking your internal state before acting. Monitoring what the outcome might mean. Running every action through a feelings forecast. It all feels like due diligence.

It's not.

The internal signals your limbic system generates were shaped at a time when looking foolish in the tribe could get you killed. Those signals feel like they're telling you something about the current situation. They're not. They're artifact from a context that ended a long time ago.

The 2-node leader doesn't suppress those signals. They just don't find them interesting. Their loop is action, analysis of action, repeat. They don't pick up the identity noise.

That's not a personality trait. And it's closer to a decision than most leaders think.

The decision is to stop treating the feelings forecast as a prerequisite for action.

Pre-accept all outcomes before you start. Take whatever attribution you wanted to make about yourself and make it about the action instead. Did the action work? What can you change about the next one? Those are the only two questions.

When the only questions are about the action, you can play yourself like a character in a game. You're watching from third person. The character took an action. It produced a result. Adjust and go again. The character doesn't replay the tape between reps looking for what it says about them. The character just takes the next at-bat.

You don't arrive there by resolving the internal noise first. You arrive by acting while it's still running and discovering it was never the instruction.

If everything you say you want were on the other side of the 52nd rep of an action that did nothing 51 times, would you be the type of person who gets there, or not?

You can detrain the third node so the 52nd rep becomes just like the 2nd.

— C

It's not always easy to get to the 52nd rep in all the areas you care about. I work with groups of 7–12 CEOs, Founders and Owners who do it together. See my contact info if you're interested.